Adwa (Tigrinya: ዓድዋ; Amharic: ዐድዋ; also spelled Adowa or Aduwa) is a town and separate woreda in Tigray Region, Ethiopia.

It is best known as the community closest to the site of the 1896 Battle of Adwa, in which Ethiopian soldiers defeated Italian troops, thus being one of the few African nations to thwart European colonialism.

[3] By 1700, it had become the residence for the governor of Tigray province and grew to overshadow Debarwa, the traditional seat of the Bahr Negash, as the most important town in northern Ethiopia.

[3] After the departure of Tewodros, the town was seized in 1865 by another nobleman, Wagshum Gobaze, who soon claimed the title of Emperor under the name Tekle Giyorgis II.

[3] Adwa's was most notably the site of the final battle of the First Italo-Ethiopian War, where the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II fought to defend Ethiopia's independence against Italy in 1896.

After his visit to the town in 1897, the British journalist Augustus B. Wylde relates that "Wandering about Adowa was a sad business, many of the streets were entirely deserted, the Mahomedan quarter was tenantless and the houses with the exception of two or three were unroofed and in ruins.

[3] On 6 October 1935, Italian forces entered Adwa, after two days of bombardment had shocked Ras Seyoum Mengesha into a hasty retreat, abandoning large stocks of food and other supplies.

The town had passed from Italian hands before 12 June 1941, when the newly arrived 34th Indian State Force Brigade set up a post office there.

[10] Based on the 2007 national census conducted by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia (CSA), this town has a total population of 40,500, of whom 18,307 are men and 22,193 women.